


Komorebi

by barghest



Series: With Dishonour [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brother Feels, Disabled Character, Gen, Hospitalization, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Minor Character Death, References to Illness, and lots of them, ok im bored of tagging this already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 23:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8943886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barghest/pseuds/barghest
Summary: Shimada Naoki dies peacefully in his sleep.Except, he does not.(more writing from rp)





	

**Author's Note:**

> shifting more stuff over from rp account.  
> prob a good time to point out the hanzo i rp has cerebral palsy, necessitating leg braces and long term physical therapy in order to help him function independently. hell yeah. anyway i wrote this at like 4am so here hoping its good
> 
> 木漏れ日 (komorebi) - the sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees (a rough english equivalent)

Shimada Naoki dies peacefully in his sleep.

Except, he does not.

Hanzo is made to write the official statement; his first task as the clan’s new head - but first he sits by a bedside for hours and hours and hours, the private ward of Hanamura’s hospital deathly silent in the early morning. He hasn’t moved from the hard plastic chair at his father’s bedside for eight hours, not even standing when the nurses enter (as they do, every half hour or so, checking pulse, blood pressure, diagnostics). He will shift in his seat, sitting on one foot (bad form), leaning on one seat bone and then the other as the numbness sits in. Hanzo does not mind. He gives it no thought.

The only thought he has is for the boney hand in his, wrapped in tubes and plasters and nodes that beep, beep, beep softly whenever the hand shifts a little. Naoki spends most of the time with his eyes closed, grey lashes fluttering every time the door opens. He doesn’t speak much. Wheezing is mostly what he manages, coughing occasionally when phlegm gathers at the back of his throat and begins to slide into his lungs (that’s what the doctor tells him, when he asks). Hanzo can feel how brittle his fingernails are with every trace of his thumb.

He remembers the day they came back late from a meeting, his father brushing off the stab wound to his side like it was nothing to worry about. The perpetrator already dealt with. He had waved away any fears under the bandages, circling his ribs and hugging the bones where they poked beneath sagging skin. It had gone septic with the week, refusing to heal, crusting into skin darker than the liver spots growing on his neck, oozing when he leant over to reach for things. Genji had been absent when he had started coughing, hands shaky when he covered his mouth. He refused the doctor. Stubborn old man.

Poisoned, stubborn old man. The blade had been imbued with something that wrapped around his heart like a clenched fist. He let Hanzo call the family’s doctor only when he finds it hard to stand, when he smashes an heirloom tea cup at dinner and finds himself wheezing when he leans to pick up the pieces. Father has always been flippant with his health, even in his later years and in the milkiness of his left eye.

And then, he stumbles, he falls, he drops. And the neon of the ambulance lights reflect in the droplets on the office window. Hanzo doesn’t come, at first, relegated to looking after the homestead (father demands it so). He isn’t allowed to visit until neither his brother nor his father come home. The rain lets off when the sun sets and his foot grows numb from being sat on and Naoki’s hand grows still in his.

“Hanzo,“ he barely manages the first syllable, but Hanzo is finely tuned to sense his name, even when rattled from deep within someone’s chest.

He sits up almost immediately, not letting go of his father’s hand, “yes?” His father’s eyelids twitch ever so slightly. “What is it? Do you need the nurse?”

“No.” Of course not. “Where is Jiji?”

Hanzo looks at his hand, the skin darker and taunt in comparison to the delicate fingers held in his. Naoki’s nails were always pristine, but he could see flecks of blood wedged underneath the tips. A patient’s smock covers the wound coverings on his side, but there was little doubt he had been scratching. Hanzo squeezes his father’s hand gently.

“You should leave your wound alone,” he turns himself to adjust the bedsheets with one hand, “or it won’t heal”. Only when he looks up does he meet the eyes of his father, half closed, strangely apologetic.

“That isn’t an answer, Hanzo,” his voice is too quiet and tired to carry any of the threat it normally would, but it still sits heavy on Hanzo’s shoulders - like warm palms on his arm, that knowing touch that refuses to let him evade the question (that would always know when he had done something wrong, when he was a child). He feels small in that moment, his feet not touching the floor. Hanzo can’t hold his father’s gaze, even now.

“I don’t know,” not entirely true, “but I have messaged him,” more true, “to see. Would you like me to try again?” The pressure of his father’s thumb as it traces the side of his hand is enough confirmation, and Hanzo digs his phone out one-handed. Genji would be were he always was. Genji would not answer his phone, no matter how often Hanzo called or texted or tried to message around his friends. Genji would come home when he could be bothered, no terse words nor demands deterring him. It’s fruitless to try, but Hanzo tries anyway.

“Tell him I am not angry,” their father rests his head back against the pillows, eyes drifting up to the ceiling - glass, a family privilege that allowed him a view of the stars above as they faded into the dawn, chased away by the sun as it creeps over the horizon. When Hanzo had been small, he had spent stretches of time here, his mother pointing out the constellations when he couldn’t sleep, the stitches on his legs too itchy, the braces holding them in place too sore. He remembers seeing the fruit bats overhead, black shapes against the moon, Genji drooling a little where he lay tucked up next to him. He wouldn’t mind Genji sneaking in now, as then, a small child again avoiding security and medical staff to nap with his family.

But no such thing happens.

“Tell him he is still loved,” Naoki continues as the sky turns purple, red, orange, a fruit basket of thin clouds that drift away, chasing the retreating night. “I have always loved you both.”

“Father,” Hanzo’s phone is the bedside table now, forgotten as he takes his father’s hand in both of his own, a sick feeling growing in the back of his throat.

“I could not have asked for more wonderful sons,” he continues softly and Hanzo’s calves feel weak, the joints in his legs not obeying as he makes an effort to stand, to inch himself closer. “You may have your faults, both of you, but…”

“Father—“

“I do not shy from them.”

“Father, I should call a nurse—“

“Don’t,” and Hanzo is quiet at that. “Not yet. A little longer, please. For me.” He feels small in the chair again, hard and plastic beneath him. “Where is Jiji?” He can’t meet his father’s eyes still, can’t so much as look at his face and the grey stubble on his cheeks where he had not shaven today.

“I don’t, he’s not,” Hanzo struggles for words, “he’s not coming, father. Naoki smiles softly.

“He will,” his eyes are closed, quietly confident in his words. The rain clouds are gone outside, the glass ceiling dried in the sun’s morning rays as it rises above the horizon. Hanzo feels a shake growing in his hands, clammy fingers encircling his father’s thin wrist as the steady beat beneath his fingertips slows. “He will come.”

He does not. And Shimada Naoki dies peacefully in the dawn, holding the hand of only one son.


End file.
